Celebrity magazines and newspapers thrive on gossip: casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true. There is something perversely enjoyable about these reports and a whole industry has grown up around these things.
The Bible has a lot to say about gossip, however, and urges us to avoid this:
- Agossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret. (Prov 11:13)
- A perverse person stirs up conflict, and agossip separates close friends. (Prov 16:28)
- The words of agossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts. (Prov 18:8, Prov 26:22)
- Without wood a fire goes out; without a gossip a quarrel dies down. (Prov 26:20)
If we wish to give up things for Lent, gossip is one thing we should let go of. When we gossip, we prove ourselves to be untrustworthy and not peace-loving. We also violate God’s commands to love people sincerely and can damage people’s reputations, often without meaning to (gossip has been called ‘reputation theft’.)
An old proverb relates the story of a person who repeated gossip and later found out that the rumour they had spread was untrue. He was sorry and went to ask how to repair the damage, only to be told to take a feather pillow outside and scatter the feathers. The next day, he was to bring the feathers back. Of course, this was impossible to do, and so we see how it is so easy to speak carelessly and thoughtlessly and how difficult it is to repair the damage (broken trust, hurt feelings, damaged reputations.) We do well to follow James’s advice to be slow to speak (James 1:19), for that way we can avoid hurting people through gossip. It’s our choice what we say and what we listen to; let’s build each other up and speak well of all people!